Lost Years Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Christopher Isherwood

  Chronology

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Lost Years: January 1, 1945–May 9, 1951

  August 26, 1971

  1945

  1946

  1947

  1948

  1949

  1950

  1951

  Glossary

  Textual Note

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years writing for Hollywood, but by 1945 he had all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his habit of keeping a diary. Instead he embarked on a life of frantic socialising and drinking. Looking back from the 1970s, Isherwood recreated these years from personal memories to form a remarkably honest mixture of private and social history.

  About the Author

  Christopher Isherwood, among the most celebrated writers of his generation, was born in Cheshire in 1904. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). Between 1929 and 1939 he lived mostly abroad, spending four years in Berlin, and then elsewhere in Europe, producing the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) on which the musical Cabaret was later based. Following his move to America (he became a US citizen in 1946), Isherwood wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the great Indian mystic Ramakrishna. During the 1970s he began producing a series of autobiographical books: Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and his Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, the text of one month of his diary published with drawings by Don Bachardy. Christopher Isherwood died in January 1986.

  KATHERINE BUCKNELL

  Katherine Bucknell is the editor of Christopher Isherwood’s Diaries Volume 1: 1939–1960 and W H Auden’s Juvenilia: Poems 1922–1928. She also co-edits the Oxford University Press series Auden Studies and is co-founder of the W H Auden Society.

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

  Novels

  All the Conspirators

  The Memorial

  Mr Norris Changes Trains

  Goodbye to Berlin

  Prater Violet

  The World in the Evening

  Down There on a Visit

  A Single Man

  A Meeting by the River

  Autobiography

  Lions and Shadows

  Kathleen and Frank

  Christopher and his Kind

  My Guru and His Disciple

  October

  Biography

  Ramakrishna and His Disciples

  Plays (with W H Auden)

  The Dog Beneath the Skin

  The Ascent of F6

  On the Frontier

  Travel

  Journey to a War (with W H Auden)

  The Condor and the Crows

  Collections

  Exhumations

  Where Joy Resides

  Diaries

  Volume 1: 1939–1960

  Chronology

  1904 August 26, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, first child of Frank Bradshaw Isherwood and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood (née Machell Smith), born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire, on the estate of his grandfather, John Bradshaw Isherwood, squire of nearby Marple Hall.

  1911 October 1, Isherwood’s brother Richard Graham Bradshaw Isherwood born.

  1914 May 1, Isherwood arrives at his preparatory school, St. Edmund’s, Hindhead, Surrey; August 4, Britain declares war on Germany and Isherwood’s father receives mobilization orders; September 8, Frank Isherwood leaves for France.

  1915 May 8 or 9, Frank Isherwood evidently wounded at Ypres, probably killed.

  1917 January 1, Isherwood begins keeping a diary; he records walking with W. H. Auden at school.

  1919 January 17, Isherwood arrives at Repton, his public school, near Derby.

  1921 Winter, Isherwood joins G. B. Smith’s history form, where he meets Edward Upward, at Repton; November, Kathleen Isherwood moves with her mother to 36 St. Mary Abbot’s Terrace in West Kensington, London.

  1923 October 10, Isherwood goes up with an £80 history scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he renews his friendship with Edward Upward.

  1924 Isherwood and Upward start keeping diaries and begin to invent a fantasy world, Mortmere, about which they write stories.

  1925 June 1, Cambridge Tripos exams begin; June 18, Isherwood is summoned to Cambridge to explain his joke Tripos answers and withdraws from university; August, takes job as secretary to André Mangeot’s string quartet; December, meets W. H. Auden and renews prep school friendship.

  1926 Easter, Isherwood begins writing Seascape with Figures, which is the first version of All the Conspirators and his fourth attempt at a novel.

  1927 January 24, takes first job as private tutor.

  1928 May 18, Isherwood’s first novel, All the Conspirators, is published by Jonathan Cape; May 19, he visits Bremen; June 22, Auden introduces Isherwood to Stephen Spender; October, Isherwood begins as a medical student at King’s College, London, and Auden moves to Berlin.

  1929 March, Isherwood leaves medical school at the end of spring term; March 14–27, he visits Auden in Berlin where he meets John Layard and begins an affair with Berthold Szczesny; November 29, Isherwood moves to Berlin.

  1930 December, Isherwood becomes tenant of Fräulein Meta Thurau at Nollendorfstrasse 17; during 1930, his translation of the Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire is published.

  1931 By early 1931, Isherwood meets Jean Ross and soon afterwards he also meets Gerald Hamilton; in September, he begins teaching English.

  1932 February 17, The Memorial is published by Isherwood’s new publisher, the Hogarth Press; March 13, Isherwood meets Heinz Neddermeyer while living at Mohrin with Francis Turville-Petre; August 4–September 30, Isherwood visits England and meets Gerald Heard and Chris Wood; September 14, he meets E. M. Forster; October, works as translator for a communist workers’ organization, the IAH (Internationale Arbeiterhilfe), in Berlin.

  1933 March 23, Hitler achieves dictatorial powers; April 5, Isherwood arrives in London with his belongings, preparing to leave Berlin for good; April 30, he returns to Berlin and on May 13, leaves for Prague with Heinz; they travel to Greece for the summer and return to England in September; October, Heinz returns to Berlin and Isherwood begins work as Berthold Viertel’s collaborator on a film script for The Little Friend.

  1934 January 5, Heinz is refused entry into England; January 20, Isherwood meets Heinz in Berlin and takes him to Amsterdam, returning alone to London; February 21, filming starts on The Little Friend; March 26, Isherwood joins Heinz in Amsterdam and they travel to Gran Canaria for the summer; June 8–August 12, Isherwood writes Mr. Norris Changes Trains; August 26, The Little Friend opens in London; September 6, Isherwood and Heinz set off for Copenhagen.

  1935 January, Auden visits Copenhagen to work with Isherwood on The Dog Beneath the Skin; February 21, Mr. Norris Changes Trains is published by Hogarth; April, Isherwood moves Heinz to Brussels; May 9, The Last of Mr. Norris (U.S. edition of Mr. Norris Changes Trains) is published by William Morrow; May 13, Heinz receives a three-month permit for Holland and they settle in Amsterdam, lodging next to Klaus Mann; also in May, The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where Is Francis?, written with Auden, is published by Faber and Faber; September 16, Isherwood and Heinz return to Brussels; December 21, they move from Antwerp to Sintra, Portugal, where Spe
nder and Tony Hyndman join them.

  1936 January 12, The Dog Beneath the Skin opens at the Westminster Theatre in London; mid-January, Isherwood completes a draft of Sally Bowles; March 14, Spender and Hyndman leave Sintra for Spain; March 16–April 17, Auden visits Sintra to work on The Ascent of F6; July 25, Heinz is ordered through the German consul in Lisbon to report for military service, but does not; September 11, Faber publishes Auden and Isherwood’s play The Ascent of F6; Isherwood works on Lions and Shadows.

  1937 February 26, The Ascent of F6 premieres at the Mercury Theatre in London; March 17, Isherwood takes Heinz from Brussels to Paris; April 25, he joins Heinz in Luxembourg; F6 successfully transfers to the Adelphi Little Theatre; May 12, Heinz is forced to leave Luxembourg and goes to Trier, in Germany, where he is arrested by the Gestapo; July 16—August 4, Isherwood works for Alexander Korda on the film script of a Carl Zuckmayer story; August 12—September 17, he works with Auden in Dover on their new play, On the Frontier; September 15, Isherwood finishes Lions and Shadows; October, the Hogarth Press publishes Sally Bowles (later incorporated into Goodbye to Berlin).

  1938 January 19, Isherwood and Auden leave for China to write a travel book, Journey to a War; during the spring “The Landauers” appears in John Lehmann’s magazine, New Writing; March 17, Lions and Shadows is published by Hogarth Press; July 1–9, Isherwood and Auden, returning around the world from China, visit Manhattan where Isherwood meets Vernon Old; September 19, Isherwood begins writing Journey to a War, using his own and Auden’s diary entries; September 26, The Ascent of F6 is televised; October 1938, Faber publishes Auden and Isherwood’s last play together, On the Frontier; November 14, On the Frontier opens at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge; mid-December, Isherwood works with Auden in Brussels on Journey to a War, completed December 17; Jacky Hewit accompanies Isherwood in Brussels through the New Year.

  1939 January 19, Isherwood sails for America with Auden, arriving January 26 in New York where they settle; March, Goodbye to Berlin is published by the Hogarth Press and in the U.S. by Random House; the same month, Journey to a War is published by Faber and by Random House; early May, Isherwood applies for U.S. residency; May 6, he sets off for California with Vernon Old; June 9, Isherwood gets quota visa; July, Isherwood begins working with Berthold Viertel again and meets Swami Prabhavananda; early August, Isherwood begins instruction in meditation; October, Isherwood’s new story, “I Am Waiting,” is published in The New Yorker; November, Isherwood gets his first Hollywood film job writing for Goldwyn Studios.

  1940 January, Isherwood begins his first writing job at MGM, on Rage in Heaven for Gottfried Reinhardt; July 9, Uncle Henry Bradshaw Isherwood dies, Isherwood inherits the family estate and gives it to his brother, Richard; November 8, Swami Prabhavananda initiates Isherwood.

  1941 By January 11, Isherwood finishes working on Rage in Heaven and then “polishes” other MGM scripts; February 17, he breaks with Vernon Old and, in mid-March, moves next door to Gerald Heard; early May, Isherwood finishes his first year’s contract at MGM and leaves the studio; by mid-June, Denny Fouts moves in with Isherwood; July 15, Kathleen Isherwood returns to live at Wyberslegh with Richard; August 22, Isherwood flies east to visit Auden and meets Caroline Norment at the Cooperative College Workshop, a refugee hostel in Haverford, Pennsylvania; October 11, he moves to Haverford to work in the hostel; also during 1941, Gerald Heard begins to build his monastic community, Trabuco.

  1942 June 30, Isherwood has a medical exam at the draft board; July 6, the Haverford refugee hostel closes, and Isherwood returns to California; July 13, he receives his draft classification, 4–E, and applies to Los Prietos Camp to do civilian public service; by October 12, Isherwood begins working on a translation of the Bhagavad Gita with Swami Prabhavananda; October, another story, “Take It or Leave It,” is published in The New Yorker; November 30, Isherwood starts work at Paramount on Somerset Maugham’s The Hour Before Dawn; December 31, Isherwood writes “The Wishing Tree” for the Vedanta Society magazine.

  1943 January 29, Isherwood finishes at Paramount; February 6, he moves into the Vedanta Center, Ivar Avenue, in preparation for becoming a monk; May, Isherwood begins writing Prater Violet; August, Denny Fouts introduces Isherwood to Bill Harris.

  1944 February and again in March, Isherwood stays with Aldous and Maria Huxley in Llano where Isherwood and Huxley work out a film story, Jacob’s Hands; April 17, Isherwood decides he cannot become a monk; during June, Isherwood spends a few days with Bill Harris at Denny Fouts’s flat in Santa Monica; Isherwood and Huxley complete draft of Jacob’s Hands; August, Isherwood and Prabhavananda’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita is published; September 25, Isherwood moves to Ananda Bhavan, the new Santa Barbara Vedanta Center in Montecito; November 17, Isherwood leaves Ananda Bhavan and moves to Laguna; late November, Isherwood returns to the Hollywood Vedanta Center on Ivar Avenue.

  1945 February 5, Isherwood’s affair with Bill Harris ends; February 21, Isherwood starts three months’ work on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White for Warner Brothers; June 2, Isherwood attends Bill Caskey’s twenty-fourth birthday party; June 4, he returns to Warner Brothers to work on Maugham’s Up at the Villa for Wolfgang Reinhardt; during the summer. Prater Violet appears in Harper’s Bazaar and New Directions publishes The Berlin Stories, containing The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin; August 23, Isherwood moves out of the Vedanta Center into the Beesleys’ chauffeur’s apartment; he begins translating Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination with Swami Prabhavananda; September 25, Isherwood and Bill Caskey move into Denny Fouts’s empty apartment, 137 Entrada Drive, Santa Monica; November, Prater Violet is published in the U.S. by Random House; towards the end of the year, Vedanta for the Western World, edited and introduced by Isherwood, is published by Marcel Rodd.

  1946 January 12, Isherwood undergoes surgery to remove a median bar inside his bladder; April, Caskey quarrels with Denny Fouts, and Isherwood and Caskey move into Salka Viertel’s garage apartment, 165 Mabery Road, Santa Monica; May, Prater Violet is published in the U.K. by Isherwood’s new English publisher, Methuen; during the summer, Isherwood revises his wartime diaries, 1939–1944; November 8, he becomes a U.S. citizen; towards the end of the year, Isherwood works with Lesser Samuels on a film treatment, Judgement Day in Pittsburgh.

  1947 January 19, Isherwood sets out (via New York) on his first postwar trip to England; March 28, he signs deed of gift passing on Marple estate, including Wyberslegh, to his brother Richard; April 16, returns to New York; during the summer, he lives with Caskey at James and Tania Stern’s apartment at 207 East 52nd Street, Manhattan; in August, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination is published; September 19, Isherwood sails with Caskey for South America to write a travel book, The Condor and the Cows; September 28, they arrive in Cartagena, Colombia; October 28, Isherwood and Caskey travel south via Bogota; November, they continue through Ecuador and reach Lima, Peru, by year end; also in 1947, the first U.S. edition of Lions and Shadows is published by New Directions.

  1948 January, Isherwood and Caskey travel in Peru and Bolivia; February, they leave La Paz, Bolivia, for Argentina and depart from Buenos Aires by ship in late March; April 1, they stop in Rio, then continue direct from Brazil to North Africa and France, arriving in Paris on April 22; April 30, they proceed to London; late May, Isherwood visits his family at Wyberslegh; June 9, Isherwood and Caskey sail for New York; June 15, Isherwood returns alone to California and on July 19 he starts work on The Great Sinner at MGM; mid-August, he meets Jim Charlton; that summer, Isherwood begins translating Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms with Swami Prabhavananda; September 20, Caskey returns; September 28, Isherwood moves with Caskey into 333 Rustic Road; October 9, Isherwood finishes work at MGM; November 12, Isherwood’s nanny, Annie Avis, dies; December 16, Denny Fouts dies in Rome.

  1949 January 6—13, Isherwood works for Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM; April 12, he completes The Condor and the Cows; he begins to work intermittently on his proposed novel The
School of Tragedy; by May, he begins working with Lesser Samuels on The Easiest Thing in the World; August 6–7, Isherwood meets Evelyn Caldwell (later Hooker); August, he finishes draft of The Easiest Thing in the World with Lesser Samuels; August 10, meets Igor and Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft; also in August, he works on Below the Equator with Aldous Huxley and Lesser Samuels; September 7, Trabuco is dedicated as a Ramakrishna monastery; November 11, Caskey leaves for Florida; also in November, Methuen publishes The Condor and the Cows; December 1, Isherwood writes a memorial article on Klaus Mann; during 1949, Isherwood is elected to the U.S. Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  1950 Isherwood works on a film script, The Vacant Room, with Lesser Samuels; late April, Caskey returns via Kentucky to Rustic Road; June 29, Bill Kennedy proposes that Isherwood begin reviewing regularly for Tomorrow; August 11, Isherwood and Peggy Kiskadden leave for Arizona and New Mexico by car; December 10, Isherwood moves with Caskey to 31152 Monterey Street, Coast Royal, South Laguna.

  1951 May 21, Isherwood leaves Caskey and moves to the Huntington Hartford Foundation, 2000 Rustic Canyon Road, Pacific Palisades; he works on The School of Tragedy; during the spring, John van Druten writes the play I Am a Camera, based on Goodbye to Berlin; by August 22, Isherwood is back in South Laguna with Caskey; mid-September, he decides to break finally with Caskey and returns to the Huntington Hartford Foundation; October, Isherwood goes to the East Coast for rehearsals of I Am a Camera, directed by van Druten; November 8, I Am a Camera opens in Hartford, Connecticut; November 28, I Am a Camera opens successfully on Broadway at the Empire Theater; December, Isherwood sails for England where he spends Christmas with his mother and brother in a London hotel; Caskey joins the merchant marine.

  1952 February 10, Isherwood returns to Berlin after eighteen years and sees Heinz Neddermayer for the first time since Heinz’s arrest by the Gestapo in 1937; February 27, Isherwood sails from England for New York; by April 8, he returns to California with Sam Costidy; May 4, Isherwood settles at Trabuco where he completes Patanjali translation and part one of his novel, still called The School of Tragedy; May 21, he moves alone to the Mermira apartments in Santa Monica; also during May, Isherwood resigns from the board of the Huntington Hartford Foundation and the first chapter of his unfinished novel is published in New Writing; June, Isherwood begins fixing up Evelyn Hooker’s garden house at 400 South Saltair Avenue in Brentwood and moves there in late summer; during 1952, Vedanta for Modern Man, edited by Isherwood, is published in U.S. and U.K.; Isherwood completes “California Story” (later reprinted as “The Shore” in Exhumations) to accompany Sanford Roth’s photographs in Harper’s Bazaar.